Blog 6

In Chapter 7 of the Brown (2016) text, the author points out how gender could influence career counseling. As a female and being in the group that is addressing career counseling for the LGBTQ community, I found this chapter to be very informative. Brown (2016) notes how women may have prematurely eliminated certain career options because of sex-role stereotyping. This made me recount Gottfredson’s theory of circumscription and compromise. In Gottfredson’s (1996) theory, people develop schemas that are organized along three dimensions: masculinity/femininity, prestige of the occupation, fields of work (as cited in Brown, 2016, p. 80). Brown (2016) further notes that the sex-type assigned to the occupation is one of the most important factors in the career making process. In applying Gottfredson’s theory to females, Brown’s (2016) point that females may limit their horizons in regards to careers makes sense. Many females may feel apprehensive about entering careers that have been primarily dominated by males historically speaking, such as trade fields and STEM fields. Brown (2016) does note women make up a large portion of the STEM workforce currently, which I believe demonstrates a trend towards the elimination of the stereotype that women are not as good in the science and mathematical fields.

            Another point that Brown (2016) points out that I found interesting is that research is showing that women generally express higher levels of job satisfaction than their male counterparts. Brown (2016) makes many good arguments as to why this could possibly be occurring, such as women being more self-aware and they are better able to project themselves into future occupations. I think that another contributing factor that Brown (2016) does not account for is males may feel obligated to stay in a career in order to be the ‘bread winner’ or may settle for a career that may not necessarily want to be in because of the prestige or salary associated with it.

            There were many ideas brought forth by Brown (2016) in Chapter 7 that I would like to bring to my group in creating the career workshop working with the LGBTQ community and helped expand my knowledge of the LGBTQ community. Chung (2003) notes the importance of counselors working with this community to start by doing soul-searching about their beliefs and biases about homosexuality and that counselors must understand the identity development of these individuals (as cited in Brown, 2016, p. 130). Recognizing that I have a small knowledge base about the identity of development of these communities and have not worked with many of these individuals, before coming up with a career development model, I should research the areas that I am lacking knowledge. Brown (2016) also notes that social support is important in the career development and aspirations of marginalized groups. Therefore, when working with my group, I would like to incorporate this point in some manner.

References

Brown, D. (2016). Career information, career counseling, and career development. Boston, MA: Person Education, Inc.